But the Bible also says God is "down there." In chasms, valleys, bedrock, graves. In the depths of love, loss, and pain. In the depth of prayer, too, where sighs replace words. God is a lower power.

Moses discovered this with Pharaoh breathing down his neck. God's power plunged under the sea, exposing seabed. Once they got down to the bottom of things, the Hebrew children were free.

Jonah discovered this sailing away (he thought) from God. In a storm, the crew tossed him overboard. Down he sank. Up from the fathoms came Leviathan to save him. Spewed onto Nineveh's shore, he finally did God's will.

Ezekiel learned this on a grisly tour of a bone-strewn valley. Like corpses bulldozed into pits at Treblinka, the bones were a people, the "whole House of Israel." In genocidal depths Ezekiel preached them back to life.

Christ went deepest of all, dispossessing himself of highness in a mother's womb. One silent night she laid him to sleep in a lowly trough. Deep in rock he was laid to sleep again, dead from wounds we gave him. In the final abyss God found him. Easter took place in a grave.

If God is a lowness, here's what I wonder:

Why do I who love God try so hard to go high, get high, climb the ladder, stay on top? Why don't I love a more lowly way, a trajectory downwards into fissures love has not yet filled, into the world's deep pain? Why don't I seek a humble, hidden life with this fathomless Mercy awaiting me down there, where freedom begins, and deep calls longingly to deep?

Prayer

God of the deep, O deepen me. Amen.

About the AuthorMary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups.